I would teach Derpy (whose username is comically apropos at times) about evolution over there, but I have the intuition that they would not listen.

For the title of this thread, how about "Aimless, Largely Trivial Ramblings"?

DesertExplorer, her name is Callie. She is probably one of my better friends in the world. I think it's not totally inaccurate to assume that the tranquility and sweetness of my avatar doesn't quite match up with my perceived personality, which is marked by brusqueness and precision.

I kept my joke clean with only urine and forgot about #2! It could have been a dirty joke! I didn't reply in the other thread but I would love to sit back and listen to Durbybunneh's theories that challenge natural selection. I'll sit back with some popcorn and 3D glasses, and I liked your joke too. Evolution is just a theory though and I'm open minded, but you know what? So is gravity! Believe it or not, nobody can truly explain why it exists and there are competing theories. But it's still obvious it exists, like it or not. I'm on the Evolution Bandwagon right now and it's because I seriously thought about it and agree with it. If Derpy can change my mind, I'm open to it.

Just to sort out a minor snag: evolution is a scientific fact. The public's idea of a "theory" and science's idea of a "theory" are two different things, and this annoying morphological discrepancy has indeed been a source of great confusion--most uninformed "creationists" frantically and triumphantly leap all over the face that it's known as "The Theory of Evolution," thinking that the term "theory" connotates a lack of evidence or a sub-meaning of tentativity. There's nothing tentative about it.

If we would all briefly divert our attentions to supplicate our omniscient deity, Google, we can all safely realize that a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world."

Sorry about that, I just needed to make that brief elucidation--it buzzes around in my head whenever somebody invokes the "theory" misconception.

My 'blahs' and 'blechs' filled the air with fetid halitosis. How can you breath? It was not fresh air and I challenge you on that. I think you were lying! Or being sarcastic. Ok, I was too....

I have a good thought experiment for evolution and can write it here and repost it in the other thread if need be.

Imagine creating a small insect-like robots. It just senses it's environment and moves around and gathers minerals and parts to be smelted and fabricated by a robot-swarm-hive-mind at the 'home base' much like a bee hive. They produce replica robots there, but every now and then a random 0 becomes a 1 or vice versa in their coding of how they make the replicas. Not only will they look different depending on the minerals they have in their environment, much like honey, believe it or not, tastes different depending on the terroir, but each new robot will have a slight mutation due to how it was made and also their own programming of how they behave. Sometimes it will have no noticeable affect, other times the 'insectobot' will go in circles without any improvement and other times, buy sheer chance, it will actually be an improvement that makes them more efficient to survive. The ones with no noticeable change will still continue to procreate by producing new ones based on their blue prints and so will the ones that improved to adapt to their environment better. The ones who went in circles go nowhere and have no influence on the next generation. With that one simple rule all it takes is time and the robots will change, evolve, and adapt.

That was a little rushed and I could think about it a whole lot more in detail, but you get the gist of it. Swarm-bots are certainly a possibility and not just in the realm of science fiction... it can certainly be science fact.